NOVEL NEXT Chapter 248: First Blood
The forest road died at a clearing that looked like hope had been lured out here and executed. The compound squatted behind chain-link fencing like a concrete tumor—low buildings, no windows, the kind of place where screams echo forever and nobody brings flowers.
I killed the Maybach's engine a quarter-mile out. The luxury sedan sat there gleaming, a black-tie guest at a murder scene. Out of place didn't even begin to cover it.
"Soo-Jin," I said, turning to the girl in the backseat, "tree line. Deep cover. If this goes to hell, run to the road and you call Madison." I handed her my phone.
Her face went pale, like she'd just seen her ghost clock in early. "You go alone against all those guns?"
"I have to. Can't babysit while I'm getting shot at." I tossed her the backup phone. "Stay invisible. You're good at that."
She nodded once, then disappeared into the treeline with the kind of practiced silence you only learn by surviving people who want you dead.
"System," I thought as I walked toward the perimeter, "drop the Quantum glasses."
[DING! NEURAL INTERFACE GLASSES]
[Price: 600 SP]
[Features: Thermal imaging, motion tracking, ballistic trajectory analysis, real-time tactical overlay integration with ARIA. Facial recognition jamming. Tactical feeds streamed straight into my eyes.]
[Purchase? Y/N]
"Yes. Buy them."
[PURCHASE CONFIRMED – 600 SP DEDUCTED]
The frames materialized over my face—sleek, black, sexy. They looked like something you'd wear to a yacht party, but the HUD lighting up in my vision screamed military contractor wet dream. Instantly: heat signatures, structural weak points, movement grids.
"ARIA," I whispered into the Quantum earbuds, "full compound scan."
"Twelve heat signatures," she replied, crisp as ever. "Six roving patrols. Two stationary guards. Three inside the main building. One sniper on the roof."
My vision lit up like a video game map—red dots for hostiles, yellow lines for patrol routes, blue zones for cover. It was like someone had modded reality to include cheat codes.
"Also detecting buried pressure sensors around the perimeter," ARIA added. "Every approach monitored."
I scaled the fence like a rumor, jacket camo-shifting to swallow shadows. At the top, I palmed the razor wire—my jacket's kinetic absorption tech humming quietly—then vaulted and landed in a crouch smoother than a Marvel reboot trailer.
The glasses highlighted the ground in front of me: a spiderweb of invisible death, the sensor grid sprawled like a tripwire artist had gone over budget.
"Optimal path, ARIA."
A glowing blue line threaded itself across the field. "Follow exactly, Master. Step off once and you'll light the place up."
So I ghosted forward, step after step, moving like liquid shadow. Breathing shallow, muscles aligned, body remembering every downloaded combat lesson as if I'd been born to break into nightmare factories.
Twenty feet. Forty. The main building loomed ahead, its concrete pockmarked with old bullet impacts like acne scars on a killer.
"Almost there," ARIA whispered. "Thirty more feet to—"
Something black and buzzing sliced the air past my ear like a tiny helicopter with bad intentions.
My combat-trained reflexes, calibrated for bullets and blades, translated the sudden buzzing at my ear as incoming fire. Instinct detonated in my muscles. I twisted hard to the side—only for my boot to slam down on a buried pressure sensor.
A fucking mosquito.
But it was already too late.
BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.
The forest exploded in alarms. Spotlights roared awake from half a dozen towers, shredding the night into clinical white. I stood in the center of the clearing like an actor shoved under a theater spotlight—except here the applause came in brass casings.
"Shit," I hissed, pupils shrinking against the floodlights of lights torched directly at me from every direction.
"RUN NOW!" ARIA screamed in my ear, her digital voice almost human in its urgency.
The compound came alive. Boots hammered concrete. Orders barked in Russian and English tangled in the night air, a chorus of violence waiting to find me.
RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!
Automatic fire tore loose from three firing points. Muzzle flashes stitched the dark, strobing the clearing like a rave hosted by the grim reaper. Bullets hissed past, hot metal slapping sparks off concrete, whining off steel.
I threw myself behind a rusted shipping container, the air filling with the metallic shriek of rounds punching through sheet metal above me. The impact vibrations rattled down my spine. The stench of hot lead and scorched paint filled my lungs.
"Master," ARIA cut in with calm precision that mocked the chaos, "guard approaching your left flank. Three seconds. Armed with AK-47. No body armor. Priority target."
I exploded from cover just as the guard rounded the corner—exactly where she'd said he would.
He was younger than expected, maybe mid-twenties. Military buzzcut, swagger in his stride, the kind of false confidence men carry when they think an assault rifle makes them untouchable.
Spoiler: it doesn't.
Our eyes met for a fraction of a second. His widened in shock. The rifle twitched upward, muscles coiling, finger tightening. My downloaded system combat training had already finished the calculations—range, speed, strike points, probability curves.
Two fluid steps and I was on him.
My left hand lashed out, palm striking the rifle barrel and shoving it skyward just as he pulled the trigger. The muzzle flash detonated inches from my face, white-hot gases searing the air, the sound a thunderclap that rattled my skull.
RAT-TAT-TAT!
Rounds stitched harmless stars into the night above us.
I pivoted, ripping the weapon sideways with both hands. The sling caught at his neck, yanking him off balance. His snarl twisted into panic.
My knee rocketed upward, slamming into his solar plexus with bone-breaking force.
CRACK. Ribs gave way under the impact. The sound was intimate, personal. His lungs collapsed inward, breath exploding out in a wet, choked groan.
The rifle slipped from his dying grip. His mouth opened and closed, gasping like a fish dumped on a pier. His face purpled, eyes wide with animal confusion.
I tore the AK free and brought the stock down in a savage arc.
THUNK.
The impact split across his skull with a wet crack that echoed through my bones.
He folded forward like his strings had been cut, body crashing face-first onto the concrete. Blood spilled fast, spreading in a black mirror that caught the glare of the floodlights. His body twitched once. Twice. Then stilled.
"First hostile neutralized," ARIA reported, voice clinical, detached. "Two more approaching from the north sector."
I stared at him—at the young, broken body leaking into the dirt—and my hands began to shake. The downloaded training had moved me like a machine, precise and unstoppable. But the result wasn't code. It was blood. Warm, sticky, irreversible blood. My stomach knotted hard, guilt worming under the adrenaline.